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Daily Archives: October 2, 2014

This went up at the Houston Chronicle two days after National Coffee DayUpdate — Dwight Silverman writes on my Facebook wall: “I work in the Houston Chronicle newsroom. This has a silver lining. The coffee service was Folgers. It was swill. Now, people are bringing in decent coffee to drink. Morale is up. Typos are fewer. Our writing has new energy. We aren’t sure we want our coffee budget renewed in 2015, because the Folgers will return. Oh, the humanity.” | Update 2: Some Folgers has been found at the Chronicle.* No more coffee money at the Houston Chronicle. (houstonpress.com) | Snark from Facebook: (facebook.com)* Earlier: GateHouse newspapers cancel their coffee service. (jimromenesko.com)
* Secret Service employees “trusted the Washington Post more than they trusted their headquarters’ leadership,” says the Post’s Carol Leonnig. (huffingtonpost.com)
* Washington Post staffers protest cuts in retirement benefits. One of their chants: “Race to the top, not the bottom, is this the Washington Post or Walmart?” (washingtoncitypaper.com)
* Cornell tells the Ithaca Voice it’s not welcome at a press conference announcing the new university president. ithacavoice.com) | (facebook.com)
* Vice writers have to get management OK before writing about brands. (gawker.com)
* Dallas Morning News had seven staff reporters working on page one ebola stories. (newseum.org)
* Elizabeth Spiers‘ advice for job-hunting young journalists. (elizabethspiers.com)
* Colorado “is still as good a place as there is to cover politics at the state level,” says a Denver reporter. (cjr.org)
* Mobile Press-Register is threatened with fines over unwanted lawn throws. (lagniappemobile.com)
* A “newspaper delivered by radio” from 1948. (nytimes.com/Insider subscribers only)

Getting students’ attention is, of course, the goal, says Penn State Daily Collegian client development staffer Maggie Elinsky. She tells me the sticker is a house ad for today’s P.S. section, which includes two sex columns. Elinsky says this is the first time the paper has used SEX! stickers to “sell” the paper, which is free on campus.

The Brandon (Manitoba, Canada) Sun’s Grant Hamilton reports an angry subscriber threatened to sue the paper over a change in the Saturday crossword puzzle. (It’s smaller and easier.)
“Since he’d just signed up for a six-month subscription, at least partially for the crossword, he was pretty irritated, and said ‘it wouldn’t look good’ when he took us to small-claims court.

“I’m not sure the threat was serious — we didn’t get served with papers or anything.”

Hamilton says others have complained about the new crossword, too, and the paper is going back to the old puzzle beginning this weekend.

The $10,250 per year supplemental fee that was proposed two weeks ago by UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism dean Ed Wasserman will be considered by faculty members today. They received this letter on Wednesday from the j-school’s Student Leadership Committee.

Dear J-school faculty,

Tomorrow, you all will be considering two important questions that are paramount to the future of the journalism school: Should there be a supplemental tuition fee imposed on students and, if so, how much should the fee be?

When you respond to these questions, the student leadership committee asks that you take to heart the outpouring of student and alumni concern regarding the PDST [Professional Degree Supplemental Tuition] proposal put forward by the dean. We know these issues are already in your minds, but since students cannot be in the room with you on Thursday, and will not have a second chance to weigh in on any proposal changes that might come from Thursday’s meeting, we would like to reiterate some of the central arguments students have made against the dean’s proposed PDST. We hope you take these into consideration when making your decision.

Imposing a PDST that nearly doubles the amount of tuition students must pay to attend the J-school would likely cause a drop in the number of Berkeley J-school applicants. This could ultimately devalue the degrees offered here, as demand for a spot in North Gate Hall decreases./CONTINUESRead More

* “Journalists are honest,” says Jerry Springer. “They don’t lie, but they certainly don’t tell the truth, because they don’t know the truth.” (newsrecord.org)
* BuzzFeed is praised for its diversity disclosure. “BuzzFeed’s ethnicity needs some work, but they admitted that,” says a former NABJ chair. (ajr.org)
* Whet Moser: “The role of the Internet in the decline of newspapers is probably exaggerated.” (chicagomag.com)
* While U.S. newspapers have been cutting jobs – 20,000 lost in seven years – the New York Times has been adding staff, notes Ken Doctor. (niemanlab.org)
* Times staffer: “I don’t pick up an atmosphere of despair” because of the buyouts announcement. (washingtonpost.com)
* ABC News exec Jonathan Greenberger‘s advice for those who want to work in TV news. (fastcocreate.com)
* How newspapers in Hong Kong and China are covering the protests. (npr.org)
* Why didn’t the Obama watermelon cartoon raise any eyebrows at the Boston Herald? (dankennedy.net)
* Inc. editor Jim Ledbetter is “an ideas machine” and “a fun gossip.” (observer.com)
* Megan Garber on selfies: “We’ve simply accepted them as ubiquities. We’ve given in, basically.” (theatlantic.com)
* Egypt confiscates every copy of one of the country’s largest newspapers. (nytimes.com)* Washington Post gets 150 books a day from publishers hoping their authors will get reviewed. (washingtonpost.com)
* New York Post settles with the two men on its Boston Marathon “Bag Men” cover. (ap.org)
* East Carolina University student editor receives death threats after an anonymous commenter asks why there isn’t a White Student Union. (collegemediamatters.com)